Friday, April 2, 2010

Is that a condom in your pocket, or are you just somberly ruminating over the death of Christ?

Who's the asskickin'est RSO at UofI? You are. I don't think today could have gone any better. Everyone pitched in to help or support our effort throughout the day. Thank you everyone so much! We raised some consciousness, handed out more than a few condoms, made some new friends and allies, engaged Catholic demonstrators at point-blank range, had lots of fun and maybe most significantly were accused of hate speech. Seriously.

We had a small crowd of loyal AAFers all day to shout fun slogans like "hey even Jesus had two dads, relax a little folks" and "Have agreatFriday!" Other folks like the ACLU reps and Will from PRIDE as well as many random passersby came and expressed their support and appreciation for what we were doing.In all we probably produced at least a thousand different forms of condom-related innuendo, sometimes teasing the other tables in the quad. I coaxed The 'Make a Wish Foundation' people over by answering their shouted slogan with "and after you make the wish you'll need a condom!". We had fun and got on well with all the other groups- well almost all.

Not everyone was supportive. Within 15 minutes of set-up we were accused of "hate speech" and assured "calls will be made". Later Jebus strolled by to remind us salvation requires a trip to the hardware store. The local catholics put on theirStations of the Crosspassion play. We didn't interfere, merely offering them condoms and humbly suggesting the deadlier lies of the Pope are unkind and so on. One cranky Catholic, perhaps having given up jello pudding for lent, angrily spat out "have some respect" as if the quad was their personal altar. That said, most of the Catholics and Christians that approached our table were polite, thoughtful people. We had at least a dozen different discussions over HIV/AIDS and sexuality. The ones to which I was privy reinforced the necessity of these events in my mind. Plenty of people are very poorly informed on some of the biggest tragedies going on in our world. I've added some photos from the event to our flickr photostream here.Thanks again to everyone who helped make this a huge success!